The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush plays cheerleader, House committee OKs income tax cut, Lieberman keeps talking God, Clinton aides testify, FBI uses more polygraphs, Supreme Court stays execution, Napster returns to court, Census Bureau kills adjusted figures, Ventura clarifies campaign statement, Washington gets FEMA help:

• Speaking at an elementary school in Little Rock, Ark., on Thursday, President Bush said that "despite expected increases in federal funding, the federal government should not attempt to run schools or even write the tests," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. The stop was part of Bush's two-day, multi-state tour to sell his budget and tax plans to the public.
• After his stop in Arkansas, Bush traveled to Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History, where he said "he wants to take a large bite out of Americans' tax bills," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. He also paid a "mostly private visit to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston."
• During his two-day tour, Bush "did not take a single tough question" and "played the part of national cheerleader, waving oratorical pompoms under a sun of almost unfettered optimism," the New York Times reports.
• Today Bush will be in Newport News, Va., to speak "at a christening ceremony... for the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class ship named in honor of President Ronald Reagan," UPI reports.
• A White House energy task force is expected to recommend "plans for a new national energy strategy" to President Bush "within 60 days," Reuters reports.
• On Thursday, Bush told Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma "that a crackdown on protesters" in that country "is testing Kuchma's commitment to democracy and human rights," AP reports.
• Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Claude Allen "has been mentioned for a post at the Department of Health and Human Services," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

• By a vote of 23-15, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a portion of Bush's tax-cut plan that would cut income tax rates, CNN.com reports. The bill could reach the House floor by next week.
• National Journal News Service reports on the markup of the bill and lists which members voted for it.
• Meanwhile, congressional Democrats introduced "a $900 billion alternative" to Bush's tax-cut plan, USA Today reports. The "real fight" over tax-cut plans will be "in the Senate."
• The House passed a bankruptcy reform measure that would make "it harder for people to use bankruptcy to get out of credit-card debts," AP reports.
• A group of legislators on Thursday "called for a temporary reprieve to the annual report card" on the war on drugs and how other nations comply with it, which the lawmakers "say is more of an embarrassment for its allies than a tool for reducing the supply of illegal drugs," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• "Several large business groups and a few smaller liberal advocacy organizations" have joined the fight against campaign finance reform, the Washington Post reports.
• Attorney General John Ashcroft will ask Congress to "attack racial profiling," Tribune News Services reports.
• Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Thursday that he will not stop talking about religion, the Hartford Courant reports. He said that America is experiencing a "spiritual awakening."
• The Washington Post reports Lieberman has "signaled that he is more receptive than many Democratic colleagues to a number of conservative proposals to expand government grants significantly to social services programs run by religious institutions."
• "Revenue from 20 celebrity-studded dinners" held by "the pro-abortion rights, bipartisan Women's Campaign Fund" is "expected to total $250,000," the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" reports. "The first dinner to sell out features" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

• Testifying before Congress on Thursday, three of former President Clinton's top aides said "that they had vehemently opposed a pardon for billionaire fugitive Marc Rich," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. The Washington Post has a transcript of the hearing.
• "Beth Dozoretz, former finance chairwoman of the Democratic Party and a close Clinton friend," cited her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions, ABCNews.com reports.
• I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was "responsible for key legal arguments cited in Marc Rich's successful pardon application," the Washington Post reports.
• "New York's tax commissioner issued a warrant" on Thursday "to recover more than $137 million in back taxes from" Marc Rich, the New York Post reports.

• The FBI will begin requiring "hundreds of FBI agents with access to sensitive intelligence information" to "face more polygraph tests," USA Today reports.
• "The Defense Department's inspector general has seized data from the computers of two Marine generals as an investigation into an alleged coverup of problems with the V-22 Osprey aircraft reaches into the top ranks at the Pentagon," the Washington Post reports.
• NASA killed its experimental space plane program on Thursday, the Washington Post reports.
• On Thursday, the Pentagon revealed "a weapon that uses electromagnetic waves to disperse crowds without killing, maiming or, military officials say, even injuring anyone slightly," the New York Times reports.

• A bomb set in a taxi killed one Israeli and injured nine people in Mei Ami, Israel, on Thursday, AP reports.
• On Friday morning, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian who they said "was trying to plant a bomb," AP reports.
• After the United States released a report on Thursday criticizing North Korea's human rights record, that nation accused "Washington of meddling in its domestic affairs when it released the scathing report," UPI reports.

• The Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution Thursday night for North Carolina death row inmate Ernest Paul McCarver, "who may be retarded, just minutes after Gov. Mike Easley had decided to let it go forward," the Raleigh News & Observer reports.
• Virginia death row inmate Thomas Wayne Akers was executed Thursday night, the Roanoke Times reports. Akers was convicted of beating a man "to death with a baseball bat in 1998" and said he wanted to be executed.
• Another Virginia death row inmate who had asked to be executed, David "D.J." Overton Jr., was found dead in his cell Thursday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. "Officials said the cause of death was unknown."

• Internet music service Napster will be back in a San Francisco court today, AP reports. "The company's attorneys were expected make a case for the song-swap service to stay alive or at least find a way to comply with pending injunction to stop the music giveaway."
• While the major music companies are opposed to it, independent artists have split opinions about Napster, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "Unlike the better-known, wealthier recording stars that get the bulk of attention regarding Napster, grassroots musicians, who scrape by on the fringes of a $40 billion worldwide industry, have more at stake in the debate over free music on the Internet."

• Officials from the Census Bureau yesterday dashed "the hopes of Democrats and civil rights leaders" when they "urged against" using adjusted figures from Census 2000, the Washington Post reports.
• "After a yearlong debate, the decision means that congressional districts will likely continue [to] be apportioned by old-fashioned census hand counts rather than newfangled statistical analysis," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Commerce Secretary Don Evans "must now weigh the recommendation from the Census Bureau, and will make the final call over adjustment by early next week," CNN.com reports.

• A new poll in Florida shows that Gov. Jeb Bush (D) could be beaten by either Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., or Attorney General Bob Butterworth (D). Yet neither plan to run for governor in 2002, the Miami Herald reports.
• A New Jersey state ethics panel is "considering whether to investigate $575,000 in loans" acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco (R) "received from friends in 1994," the Newark Star-Ledger reports. And "DiFrancesco's rival for the GOP nomination for governor, Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, also took aim yesterday at revelations about a second troubled deal involving DiFrancesco."
• Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura (I) clarified a statement he made earlier this week, saying that if he runs again in 2002, he would "leave open the possibility that he would accept unsolicited contributions," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports.
• Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) and Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan (D) toured Silver Springs, Md., yesterday in a "two-hour visit had all the trappings of a gubernatorial campaign swing," the Baltimore Sun reports. Duncan has said he has not decided whether to challenge" Townsend, "run for re-election as county executive or seek a spot as Townsend's running mate."
• "In the clearest sign yet that he may run for Congress," Robert F. Kennedy's son, Max Kennedy (D), "paid a courtesy call yesterday" on retiring Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., the Boston Globe reports. Kennedy declined "to declare himself a candidate."

• In Seattle, traffic "remained snarled by road closures, yellow tape marked areas where debris had rained down, and people were left wondering how soon they could move back to jostled homes" following Wednesday's earthquake, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
• Those who suffered damage from the earthquake "will be able to tap into Federal Emergency Management Agency money now that President Bush has declared sections of Western Washington a disaster area," the Olympian reports.
• Weather experts are predicting "one to two inches of rain by Sunday" in South Florida, which won't be enough to "ease the drought" plaguing the region, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports.
• In California, state power grid regulators said electricity "wholesalers overcharged California utilities as much as $550 million in December and January and should be ordered by federal officials to provide refunds," the Sacramento Bee reports.
• Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams (D) "offered new initiatives for education, health care and housing" in his State of the District speech Thursday night, the Washington Times reports.

• The National Commission on Federal Elections, a "privately funded voting reform group... co-chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, announced plans for a series of public hearings across the United States and said it would report on its findings in September," Reuters reports.
• Matt Hale, the "leader of a white supremacist group" who graduated from Southern Illinois University law school in 1998, "said he would contest a decision denying him a law license in Montana," AP reports.